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Abattoir.

No, it’s not a place where abbots live. While I’m in a religious digression, it seems the Pope resigned just before God tried to fire him. Now there is much racial tension in the Daily Hitler over the possibility of a black Pope. Why not? There are many, many black Christians and they (the catholic ones) believe everything the Pope tells them, even when this last one claimed that condoms don’t prevent the spread of AIDS. When that many people take your word as Gospel, popey, you have a certain responsibility, you know.

This is the same David Cameron who just pushed gay marriage through the Commons, which must have done wonders for relations between his government and Catholicism. I’m surprised the Pope didn’t leave one last retirement request with the Mafia. Then again, maybe he did, and that’s why Cameron has a horse’s head in his bolognese. No connection between Mafia-sourced horse meat and Cameron’s mad non-manifesto agenda? Maybe.

What was I talking about? Oh yes. Abbatoirs. Places where animals are killed en masse so we can have meat. I’m not going to make it sound nice because I have visited these places and it isn’t nice. It’s not a theme park and not a holiday destination unless you are Hannibal Lecter. There is blood and death and dismemberment in there and I can fully appreciate why some of those who have seen it have decided to not eat meat.

The animals are killed humanely, which means it’s done by humans, and the one being killed is dealt with out of sight of the still-living ones. A quick bolt to the brain and the lights go out. Should I object? I have killed a three-pound trout with several blows of a 3/4 Whitworth spanner, so no, I have no reason to object. I have snared rabbits and most of the time the snare snaps their necks but not always. I have set mousetraps and rat traps and those are not perfect killing machines either. Sometimes I had to finish the job manually.

I have stepped on spiders (accidentally) and deliberately napalmed ants. I have set up an open jam-jar with jammy residue and waited for wasps with a .22 air rifle (not that one, Bucko, an earlier one). I have blasted bluebottles with a Gat. I have trapped flies with a pin and seen the still-beating heart of a slug after I hit it with the round end of a ball-pein hammer. This was unusual, because the best way to dispatch a slug or snail in my youth was to hit the top of the stone wall with an airgun pellet just in front of the horrible little beast and let the splattered pellet ricochet through them.

I have killed my own food and killed many things that are not food. And yes, some of it was for fun. I’m not proud of it but I’m not ashamed of it either. It was just stuff I did in my youth. I have never killed or maimed one of my own species nor been responsible for such an atrocity, something many animal species cannot claim. It’s also something no government in living memory can claim.

Nature is nasty. Humans are part of nature. It’s nice and fluffy and cuddly to pretend that we are somehow above nature and we do like to pretend that we control it, but we are animals too. Nature cares about us as much as we care about bed bugs.

The home computer goes back how long? 1980? It was about that time I had a Sinclair ZX-81 which I expanded to a massive 16 kilobytes and spent six hours typing in a program that the tape recorder failed to record. I made that damn thing a proper keyboard and I made it run a word-processing program in BASIC but it only worked on one page at a time and the printer available was desperately crap and too expensive to bother with. Now I can get a colour printer for about £30. Thirty years. A damn generation has grown up thinking computers were forever!

Fifty years ago hardly anyone had TV or a landline phone. Fifty years before that, cars had to have a man with a red flag walking in front of them and only the very rich could afford one. Most traffic was still horse drawn.

There were no meat regulations then. None. You bought what was on the butcher’s slab and hoped it wasn’t human. You cooked it until the skin shattered at the prod of a fork and (without knowing why) rendered it bacteria-free and safe to eat. I remember being sent to the butcher by my grandmother to get a free bone for the dog we didn’t have so she could make soup out of it. That was less than half a century ago. No computers, no phone in the house, no games to make me vicious to small and little-regarded beasties, no fuss over what we had to eat as long as it didn’t come back up the way it went down.

Now we have a generation who think the internet was installed with the planet, and who believe that ‘now’ is all there ever has been. There can be no change in global temperature while they ignore the fact that temperature is a trifling thing compared to other changes.

There was once so much oxygen in the atmosphere that spiders could overlap dinner plates. There was once so little that only the bacteria could survive. Sometimes there was so much CO2 that the whole planet was sweatier than a Chinese Apple factory. Sometimes there was so little that the planet was a snowball.

We live on a lump of aggregated rock floating in nothing at all. It’s not a nice thought, just like the abattoir. But we cannot survive on nice thoughts. The conditions on this rock have changed in the past by vast degrees and they will change in the future. Species will die out and new species will appear, and humans are, like it or not, a species.

{Digression again – I have to wonder why science insists on promoting evolution as its primary weapon against religion, while at the same time working very hard to ensure that it does not progress beyond the present day.}

To the point. Is there one? You decide. I’m too pissed to care by now, Grant’s Ale Cask at £12 in Morrison’s could be blamed I suppose, but I was the one who drank it.

We have probably all eaten horse meat. With the possible exception of the readers from the Other Side, it has not killed you. Or me. I had a Tesco Value bolognese within the last month and for the price, it was pretty good. So it was horse? So what?

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27 thoughts on “Abattoir.”

“I have to wonder why science insists on promoting evolution as its primary weapon against religion, while at the same time working very hard to ensure that it does not progress beyond the present day.”

As you are aware and have written about, we have returned to an age where scientists and doctors are more politically (or philosophically) motivated than truth-seeking.

I “liked” Dawkins’ “Reason and Science” page on Facebook and there is not much of either in the numerous items posted daily. It exists to stir up hatred against religious people and Dawkins’ hordes of darkness never fail to prove this fact. They seem to thrive on hatred as much as, if not more than, the Islamists, for example, they claim to be more superior and tolerant than.

The out and proud atheist thinks he is a “free thinker” simply because he has rejected the Creator. I am still waiting for the peer-reviewed evidence of this phenomenon.

On to your second point, humans cannot evolve into anything else, because the Theory of Evolution is a 19th century mistake made possible off the back of an 18th century non-scientific philosophy called uniformitarianism.

An amateur Scottish geologist decided that the present is the key to the past and that the processes we can see now, like the various types of erosion, are responsible for all the features on the Earth.

We now know about catastrophic events like meteor strikes and super volcanoes which nullify uniformitarianism and therefore the Theory of Evolution. Uniformitarianism says that the Grand Canyon (to use a famous example) must have been carved out by the relatively tiny river flowing down at the bottom (the present is the key to the past), but a super volcano the size of Yellowstone could have created all sorts of huge new features in days, just as we saw with Mt St Helens in 1980 on a tiny scale in comparison, yet canyons were created in a few days which look like they would have taken many thousands of years.

We know so much more now than when Darwin and his contemporaries were devising their Godless universe, but it suits the atheists to ignore fact after modern fact. Like everything these days, it gets rotated 180 degrees so that lies become the ‘truth’ and the truth is lost on the other side of the lies for most people. They have never heard about uniformitarianism or catastrophism – the very basic starting point to judge the Theory of Evolution. They just believe.

Atheists love their crutch of evolution theory because it helps them ignore the Creator and live their lives their way rather than His way.

Did you see what I did there? Atheists claim that religion is a crutch. I reckon that’s another 180 degree whopper. Being faithful, whether to God or your spouse or friends or ideals, can be difficult. The atheist is the one using the crutch of disbelief or denial to avoid responsibilities or make sacrifices or moderate their behaviour through self control.

“The out and proud atheist thinks he is a “free thinker” simply because he has rejected the Creator. I am still waiting for the peer-reviewed evidence of this phenomenon”

Even if it were methodologically possible or rational to prove non-existence, do you really need peer-reviewed evidence for the non-existence of Poseidon, the god the Greeks thought lived in the sea? Isn’t it a basic principle that those who assert something are required to prove it rather than say ‘prove me wrong’

You aren’t understanding what I’m saying. Atheists believe that they become “free thinkers” by the simple act of their rejection of the Creator. They believe they become more intelligent. (And because of this they believe they have the authority to dictate to everyone else on this basis alone. Authority from whom? Exactly!)

This is what I want proof of! Improved brain function.

I was speaking tongue-in-cheek, of course. You do not become more intelligent by deciding in your own mind that you aren’t going to believe in God anymore.

And believe me, after years of trying to debate with Dawkins’ disciples, rejecting God certainly doesn’t increase intelligence. It does, however, increase pride, vanity, rudeness and the desire to control others and (collectively) take over the world – to make it better, you understand, so we all live in peace. They have a similar psychological condition (mental illness?) as the environmentalists and health Nazis. They all want total control of us because they want us all to be happy!!

To use the god you named, I don’t necessarily believe in Poseidon. That act of disbelief on my part doesn’t increase my capacity for intelligence in any way. Problem-solving doesn’t become easier. Logic doesn’t magically seem a bit simpler. I don’t fancy trying to learn trigonometry again after 30 odd years away from school.

I’m a Christian, yet I am way above the average intelligence of a Richard Dawkins fanatic. How could that be possible? I write better; I have arguments that aren’t insult-based; I care about them as human beings, whereas many of them have been conditioned by their cult leader to hate anything and anyone “religious”. I’ve read some of Dawkins’ books – or as much as I could stomach before being bored out of my mind with his obvious agenda, not of promoting science, but of wiping out religion.

So, all-in-all, I can only but deduce that far from increasing intelligence, rejecting God out of hand produces dysfunction and muddied thinking. And militantly trying to force their beliefs on others is incredibly hypocritical and a sign that they are delusional.

Richard Dawkins, is actually a highly important useful idiot in the political world. His minions are helping the government destroy our Judeo-Christian based heritage and institutions to weaken us as a nation to hand us on a platter to the EU/UN.

If Dawkins’ militants really were intelligent, they would understand this. In the short-term, their attacks on their own culture are allowing Islam to gain more and more control.

The great atheist regimes of the 20th century didn’t need religion to become the greatest killing machines in history. Unless, you consider atheism to be a religion! No gods though, just delusion and confusion brought on by godlessness and a demoralised population with nothing worth fighting for.

A young murderer in Australia was asked why he killed people and he said that he had been brought up to believe that humans are just mutated pond slime, so killing them has no moral implications.

It would seem that, again, the opposite is true to the vox pop opinion.

XX Atheists believe that they become “free thinkers” by the simple act of their rejection of the Creator. They believe they become more intelligent. (And because of this they believe they have the authority to dictate to everyone else on this basis alone. Authority from whom? Exactly!) XX

I don’t know what “Atheists” you have been on…. sorry, talking to, but I am atheist, and basically, it means I could not give a shit about your little fairy tales, just don’t try pushing them on me if you don’t want half a pound of TNT shoved up your arse with a burning fuse.

I could not give a shit about what you think, because as far as I am concerned it does not exist, and is therefore as relevant to my daily life, or my WHOLE life, as a Chinese rip off of a Harry Potter novel.

” Atheists believe that they become “free thinkers” by the simple act of their rejection of the Creator. They believe they become more intelligent. (And because of this they believe they have the authority to dictate to everyone else on this basis alone. Authority from whom? Exactly!)”

That’s what atheists believe is it, what every one of them ? I admire your industriousness in seeking them all out. Unfortunately you missed me and that’s
most certainly not what I ‘believe’. I wasn’t aware I was a useful idiot or one of Dawkin’s minions either, I rather thought I was just someone who doesn’t accept that Christianity is true or that there is any evidence for God’s existence and has a few things in common with some atheists and none with some others, just an individual human in fact. Still if it pleases you to think in this sweeping essentialist terms knock yourself out, I shall just file you under ‘collectivist drone’ for future
reference.

How kind of you to frame the religious/atheist debate solely in terms of free thinking and intelligence. Its not the evidence that is wrong but the constraints you’ve artificially placed upon it. Rather like saying because you cannot squeeze a Rhino into a jam jar the Earth must be flat. Speaking of which…

I don’t have a problem with anyone’s beliefs. But I do have a problem when they say we shouldn’t question the existence of a Supreme Being but that we must do this or don’t do that because God says so… either both are true or both are nonsense. Can you demonstrate beyond doubt that both God AND his word are true? Or do we simply leave it to the individual to believe what they choose?

Let’s be honest, it’s not the horse meat that’s the problem – it’s the fact that’s been misrepresented as cow and priced accordingly.

In France, there are shops that specialise in horse meat for human consumption. I think it was James Martin that cooked it up on Saturday kitchen and then ate it. There was a stink about that little demonstration but I can’t think why. I’ve had a horse steak and very good it was too. Certainly better than Gambian beef anyway!

And now we are told that this stuff comes from Romania. Why would this be happening all of a sudden? What’s changed? Oh yes! We let then join the EU.

Next year they’ll all be pouring across our borders in their thousands. Well, at least they’ll be used to the food if they buy it from Tesco, Aldi or Findus. Just a thought….

I blame the Fourth Reich – and in this case it might well be justified rather than my usual paranoia?

I didn’t bother reading the DM story as I was getting ready for work, but I did spot the picture and it did click how clean it all seemed to be.

I eat a lot of cheaply priced meat products and have never been of the beleif that they are made from prime cuts of beef rather than bollocks. I didn’t see horse coming though, although it doesn’t really matter as it’s perfectly edible. As Dioclese says, just misrepresented.

Yep it’s not the fact that it’s horsemeat but the fact that it’s being passed off as Beef.

My dad was a Master Butcher in Caerphilly in the 50’s. We had our own Abbotoir too, and a big cattletruck. The farthest away our meat came from was the market at Cowbridge and sometimes Hereford. Market day was a great buzz for a little five year old like me, as I used to go with him when he was buying. Then we drove them back and put them in the field next to the Abbotoir and let them get de-stessed before slaughtering them. I used to watch him do that too. The Humane Killer looked like an Uzi, great big fat bodied thing. It got a bit wiffy when the cows two stomachs flopped out and the gutters were running with blood of course. But I didn’t give it a thought, it was what my dad did wasn’t it?

Well gradually the Health and Hygene regulations and inspectors got so onerous, that we were losing money hand over fist and the big Abbotoirs were laughing all the way to the bank by getting small operators like us shut down. So dad bought a General Stores in Cardiff and got out of the business. Now with only the very big Abbotoirs operating, the poor bloody animals are getting trucked all over the country getting totally freaked out which doesn’t do the taste of the meat any good. Nobody had fridges back then and the only frozen foods were peas. All food was fresh as it could be and eaten immediately.

Brits are squeamish about what they eat, but I thought we were getting better and more adventurous as foreign travel had broadened our horizons and paletes, so I find all the hysteria about this laughable.

Not half as bored as I get with her believers. My little grey cells are a product of the Universe and not concomitant on my belief or disbelief in Sky Fairies.

Doesn’t it smack rather odd to you Believers, that the Sky Fairy of your choice, who presumably ordered the magnificence of the Universe and conjoured space and time into existence, next turns up as a Burning Bush with a list of petty rules for his/her/its creations to live by, or ELSE ? Is God a psychopath, a voyeur, a petty dictator? Or just plain not exist? A human fiction to facilitate an elite’s power and control over the rest of us.

You’ve rather misinterpreted natural selection there but even if we accept your definition I’m afraid the universe is what it is and, if it is indeed cruel and unforgiving, then it’s best we face the fact. As for asking what the universe is a product of, this a meaningless question as we can have no idea of the nature of existence, if there was any, prior to the existence we have now, it’s like asking where we were before we were born. It is difficult for us to comprehend the concept of something coming into being without a prior cause because it runs counter to our common sense understanding of the world but that often lets us
down and there is no logical reason why, in a pre causal state of existence, things shouldn’t just appear spontaneously.

I will be patient because you may be finding this genuinely difficult to grasp rather than just indulging in the equivalent of. “oh yeah, says who ?” The point I was making is that before the present universe came into being the laws which apply to it self evidently could not exist – the argument is a philosophical rather than scientific one – therefore we cannot argue that there must have been a prior cause for its existence, this is just as true with or without the intervention of a deity, that deity being, as someone has already pointed out, itself outside the laws of the universe. Consequently arguing that God must exist because there is no way for something to just appear spontaneously is illogical. The argument from design for God’s existence no longer has any validity if it ever did, there is only one credible reason for belief in God, faith and if you don’t have that faith then you are in effect an atheist, which implies nothing more than that, namely the lack of a belief in a deity.

Regarding your comment on birth. I was making an analogy not a direct comparison, however there is a huge difference between a possibility and direct causation, that possibility is one of a vast number, there is no telological process leading from all those possibilities to you or me, it is therefore meaningless to ask where we were before conception. Likewise the unknown state prior to the appearance of our universe may for all we know have held as many or more potentialities, so again to ask what existed before the universe is meaningless and furthermore since that state did not have the same physical structure as ours we can’t know whether it was impossible or not for our universe to appear spontaneously, perhaps in that alien dimension it happens all the time.

I worked in an abattoir in Little Rock, AR the summer between graduation from high school and entering college. It was messy, bloody work. It did not put me off eating meat, but it did stop me from eating canned chili.

At the time, it was a good job to have in the American South during the summer. The slaughterhouse/packing house was air-conditioned, and daytime outdoor temperatures commonly exceed 100 degrees F.

My wife’s grandmother used to tell of buying meat during World War II. She said that they could tell if it was horseflesh, as it swelled when roasted while beef shrank.